An increasing number of mobile terminals place radio technologies and non-radio technologies in an integrated housing. Many new mobile terminals feature a camera, an external memory card drive to enhance storage capacity, and some are able to receive digital television transmission through an integrated digital video broadcast for handhelds (DVB-H) receiver. Some feature the ability of the mobile device to support multiple applications. Hence, in practice there are more and more components active at the same time within the same device, creating a challenging situation both from electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and resource management point of view.
Basic EMC issues and related design rules have been known already for a long time. Some solutions have been developed to allow components integrated in a single housing to operate without excessively interfering with each other. While mechanical shielding, filtering, and component placement (i.e., locating potentially interfering components as far apart as possible in a housing) have been used in the past to reduce interference, these approaches are limited as the physical separation between components gets smaller. In addition, interference from unwanted sources, i.e., from other radios and also from unintentional non-radio components, becomes more severe as more components are placed in closer proximity. Hence, EMC and interference (e.g., electromagnetic interference, electromechanical interference, and radio frequency interference) issues inside the terminal are already getting more severe.
It has become apparent that prior art techniques that consider only radios of a mobile terminal to avoid interference situations and ensure good user experience are not sufficient. Some sort of interoperability solution should be extended to include non-radio components of the mobile terminal as well. Therefore, there is a need in the art for a widely applicable solution reducing or eliminating interference between components, both radio and non-radio, in a mobile terminal.